context dependant forgetting

• Explain the procedure of context dependent forgetting

  In this study they got deep sea divers to remember a list of words in one of four conditions

  > The divers learned a list of words either underwater or on land and then were asked to recall the words either underwater or on land

  > This created four conditions:

  1) Learn on land - recall on land

  2) Learn on land - recall underwater

  3) Learn underwater - recall underwater

  4) Learn underwater - recall on land

  
• Explain the findings of the context dependant forgetting

  In two of these conditions, the environmental contexts of learning and recall matched, whereas in the other two, they did not.

  Accurate recall was 40% lower in the non-matching conditions.

  The external cues available at encoding were different from the ones at recall and this led to retrieval failure.